Afternoon nap - should I ditch it?

DD naps *fairly* well - some days she doesn't. But mostly she does. I also aim to have her in bed at night by around 6.30-7pm (which usually ends up being any time between 6pm-7.30pm LOL).

This past week, she has been having her usual 4pm(ish) nap of around half an hour. But she's still wide awake at 7pm with no signs of wanting to snooze. It's around 8.30pm-9pm that she is going to sleep and this is in the baby bjorn watching MTV with DH. The rocking seems to get her over.

I'm thinking I'm going to ditch the 4pm nap. What do you think? Do you think she's maybe telling us she doesn't need it? Or is this late thing just a phase?

I have no idea and am not keen on her bedtime routine including a dance session to bloody Lady Gaga to get her over :ROFL:

Again, when we think that things are going smoothly she changes them!
Sue xxxx

how many other sleeps does she have during the day? trust your instincts hun, if you think she might be ready to drop one sleep then try it for a day or two. If you can get her to bed earlier at the end of the day and she seems to be handling it ok then she probably is happy with having only 2 (I assume atm she is having 3 sleeps?) sleeps. If it just makes things worse you can always go back to adding the extra sleep. I think it was around 6 months DD dropped back to 2 sleeps, then dropped back to one sleep by about 10/11 months :o

Had to lol at the image of your DH dancing around to Lady Gaga with her..bet you would need your poker face for that one :rofl:

LOL, totally!!

Yeah, she has 3 sleeps just now.

She wakes at around 5.30am for an hour, goes back to sleep till around 8am then has a nap at around 11am for anything between 40 mins - 2 hours and then her later sleep at 4.30pm-ish for half an hour.

Might just see how we go dropping the nap at 4.30pm.

Thanks mate!
Sue x

Naps can be so tricky! My DS was always really slow to drop naps, at around 5 months he was still having 4 naps a day on most days. Over time it gradually dropped to 3, but it wasn't until about 9 or so months that we consistently got down to two. Even now at almost 15 months he still has 2 naps most days. Every now and then he will have 1 nap, but it's pretty rare at this stage. I think it is probably because he does have a lot of short naps (30 mins is pretty common round here :wall:).

I've always found it best to base a days naps on the length of time he's been awake rather than a set time iykwim? Generally speaking at every stage there's always been a general block of awake time that he has before he starts to get tired, regardless of how long he's slept before hand. If I push him past that, then it can be impossible to get him to sleep, but if I go with it it is much easier. This has always meant that naps are a moving feast (and bed time to a degree) because sometimes he'll sleep for 30 minutes and other times for 1.5 hours, but I think it's helped us all stay a lot saner.... HTH

Miss E, I have been doing that to be honest, those nap times are a general sort of time. She can usually go 2 hours and then she is due a sleep again, which is what we do in the day time - she doesn't have set times to sleep
I have found though, that the 4.30pm nap time is fairly consistent but just this past week she has been still awake (and not sleepy) past the 7pm bedtime.

I just wondered if she was maybe telling us that she could stay awake later. I find that as the day goes on, the time between naps gets further apart.
Thanks for your input xxx

Sue x

My LO is the same age as yours. I ditched the afternoon catnap and replaced it with a 5.30pm bedtime, she sleeps till around 5.30am feed and back to sleep until 7.30. THis happened with my other two daughters as well. 5.30pm bedtime is BLISS!

Will try it today and see how we go. Instead of her 4.30pm nap I might take her out in either her pram or sling. She loves getting out and about - and tends not to go over to sleep if she has lots to see and do.

Ok, so we cut out the nap. And she coped really well. Had half an hour in the sling before her bath at 5.15pm, took her through to bed, had some boobie and is now asleep (6pm).

Lets just see if she stays there, I hope she doesn't treat this as a nap!!!

I'll keep you posted.
Sue x

hope she sleeps tonight for you! I know DD went through a period of treating her bedtime like a nap and she would be wide awake an hour or so later.. had me doing this :wall: for quite a while..thankfully she finally got over it!

I remember when DS went from 3 to 2 naps. He dropped the last nap of the day, due to his awake times there wasn't enough day left for another arvo sleep, if that makes sense?
He copped really well with his bedtime brought forward for a little while.
Hope she sleeps well for you tonight!

Haha, well she woke at 6.15pm raring to go again!! AARRGGHHH! Just got her back to sleep now, we watched Ice Age while she was in her sling, fell asleep pretty quickly after her first yawn.

I'm not going to stress about this, I'm sure it's just a phase. We're almost at another wonder week (26) so I'm pretty sure it's that or some developmental thing!! WHO KNOWS???!!!! LOL

Thanks guys
S X

Oh no! I'm glad she's asleep now.
Was just wondering, are you feeding her at 5:30am? If so, have you tried putting her back to bed after this and seeing if she'll just go back to sleep? This is something I tried when DS was little and was rising really early. I thought he was wide awake for the day but someone suggested I try resettling after the BF and lo and behold he started going back to sleep!

I might try that actually. The thing is, that is when DH goes to work so when she sees daddy up and about - well that's it, she wants to play and get some daddy cuddles before he heads off.
And DH usually gets home too late to see her, so we kind of don't mind that she wakes then. And she usually goes back to sleep after around 45mins to an hour.

Might see if it works tomorrow though, being a sunday and all.

Thanks